May 23, 2017
A major and frequent sin of reporting is to tell readers the intentions of politicians. This is bad reporting because the reporter does not know the intentions of politicians, they know what the politicians say and do. When a news story tells its audience that a politician “wants,” “believes,” or is “concerned” it is making an assertion that the reporter cannot possibly know to be true. The reporter is effectively assuring their audience that what the politician claims as their motive is in fact their motive.
The NYT carried this bad practice a step further in its reporting on the Trump budget. The very first sentence of the piece tells readers:
“…seeks to balance the federal budget through unprecedented cuts to programs for poor and working-class families, effectively pitting them against older Americans who would largely escape the budget ax (emphasis added).”
In this case, we have a reporter telling us the goal of the budget, presumably based on the claims of the politicians who drafted it. The idea that the goal of Trump administration is balancing the budget with this proposal is at least implausible, if not blatantly false. It is also not especially accurate to make the divide described in this sentence between the old and the poor.
On the issue of balancing the budget, the key item here is the assumption that the economy will grow at annual rate of 3.0 percent over the next decade rather than the 1.9 percent rate projected by the Congressional Budget Office. There are very few economists who will support the claim that the economy can sustain anything close to 3.0 percent annual growth for a decade.
In other words, the main way that the Trump budget gets to balance is by making a growth assumption that is unrealistic. Given this fact, it seems a rather heroic leap to tell readers that seeking a balanced budget is a major goal of the administration in proposing this budget.
The division between the elderly and poor is also less clear than claimed. The budget proposes substantial cuts to the Social Security Disability Insurance program. This violates the promise that Trump repeatedly made in the campaign not to cut Social Security. The disability program, like the retirement program is funded by designating taxes and legally off budget. It also disproportionately benefits older workers, who can remain on the program until they reach the full Social Security retirement age (now age 66, rising to age 67 by the end of the 10-year budget horizon.)
The plan also calls for large cuts to Medicaid. Roughly one fifth of Medicad spending is on seniors, primarily for long-term care. Since the program is administered by the states, they will largely decide the extent to which cuts in the program will affect the elderly as opposed to other beneficiaries, but is wrong to say that cuts to Medicaid do not affect the elderly.
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